CRAIG, EDWARD GORDON ), English stage designer and writer on the art of the theatre, was born on Jan. 16, 1872. He began life as an actor, appearing first in 1889 at the Lyceum theatre, London, under the direction of Sir Henry Irving. As a young man he designed several stage productions in which he approached the problem of stage scenery from a point of view entirely different from that current at the time. Among these pro ductions were Purcell's opera, Dido and Aeneas; Bethlehem, a nativity play by Laurence Housman; The Vikings, by Ibsen; and Much Ado About Nothing, in which his mother, Ellen Terry, appeared.
Feeling that the contemporary London theatre gave no oppor tunity for that creative experiment which he felt necessary, Craig founded his school for the Art of the Theatre in Florence in 1913. He had already published his famous book The Art of the Theatre (1911), and had commenced issue (1908) of The Mask, a journal in which appeared a large number of essays and illustrations re vealing his philosophy of theatre art and the practical applications thereof so far as they could be expressed through drawing and letterpress. These publications had wide influence all over Europe, and the effect of Craig's teaching and example is to be seen, either implicit or explicit, in the work of most of the best modern schools of stage design in Europe. The school in Florence did not fulfil Craig's hopes. His most important productions out of Eng land designed for Eleonora Duse in Florence in 1906; Hamlet, for Stanislaysky at the Moscow Art Theatre (1908 or 09) ; and The Pretenders, at the Theatre Royal, Copen hagen. It has been suggested that Craig's practical example has been a far-reaching influence, but it may be that he has most affected posterity by the large body of his writings which provide an effective theory of stage art, an extraordinary power of writing and a sense of historical scholarship, combined with a living artistic genius.
His sister, EDITH CRAIG ), studied music in London and Berlin, and has been mainly occupied in stage-management and production.